These Traces 101

Mar 21

“Underlying its whole infrastructure was the intention to allow for collaboration, foster compassion and generate creativity – what I term the 3 C’s. It was to be a tool to empower humanity. The first decade of the web fulfilled that promise – the web was decentralised with a long-tail of content and options, it created small, more localised communities, provided individual empowerment and fostered huge value. Yet in the past decade, instead of embodying these values, the web has instead played a part in eroding them. The consequences are increasingly far reaching. ”

— Tim Berners-Lee

That's Tim Berners-Lee—the father of the World Wide Web— in an article published last week, on the 35th anniversary of his deeply transformative invention (link below). Reading this, I couldn't help recognizing fragments of what I wrote last July in The Web People Forgot.

Wishing for what was is a hallmark of getting older. Through the distorted lens of memory, the past is slowly whitewashed, sprinkled with fairy dust and elevated to quasi-utopian levels. It's like childbirth, where pain is magically forgotten. But Berners-Lee's assessment isn't nostalgic: it's clear-eyed and slightly sad, but it's also a call to action.

I remember the Web he speaks of, that first decade full of promise, completely decentralized, powered by individuals as much as corporations, with everyone still on equal footing. It didn't matter how big or small you were: anyone participating was trying to find their way around this new medium. Building connections. Trying to imagine what, and where, it could all lead to.

It was about content, but interest-driven. Pottery, Mexican food, German progressive-rock, fishing, coding... Having a blog meant sharing the stuff you enjoyed, a piece of who you were and what you did. It was a mess, but fuelled by a genuine desire to reach out to others. Finding a community through personal exploration, as opposed to being shoved into an echo chamber by The Algorithm. The world we knew had suddenly expanded. Simple as that. Anything was possible.

Until, that is, we became data. Until we were collectively herded like cattle into corporate silos under a pretence of community. Relegated to reacting, or performing. Food, for shareholders to harvest quarter after quarter.

But no one's forcing us to accept this.

The future hinges on our ability to both reform the current system and create a new one that genuinely serves the best interests of humanity.

I once wrote about the quaintness of blogs in the age of social media. How it's the butt of jokes, now, on late-night tv shows, and sitcoms. To our kids, too. But to hell with that. Blogs—real blogs by real people—are ramparts against the silos. Every time we click on a bookmark instead of gazing into an algorithmic feed, we're reclaiming the power and value of our attention. We're choosing again. And while we may not be able to prevent any data from being harvested, we're at least wrestling back some control.

Maybe it's a losing battle. Maybe we've already crossed the Rubicon. But here's a thought: do some of you remember blogrolls? They were essentially personal lists of websites. Every blog would offer its own small directory of other blogs, for their readers to discover. They could, however, grow to become a bit unmanageable—which is probably why they fell out of favour. That, and Google.

Well, at the top of the main Journal page you'll now find a new entry: BLOGROLL. It's by no means complete: I quickly threw this together and I'll be adding to it over time. But if you discover someone interesting through this, awesome. Call it my small contribution to the spirit of Web 1.0. Call it fighting back.

Hyperlinks FTW ;)

Now, on to the...erm... links.